Around The Corner
by PurpleYin
Summary: Set near the end of episode 4x13, after the eventful day but before the funeral and announcement. Diana tries to get her head round what's happening.


Spoilers: All of Season 4

A/N: A quickly written last minute fic for fandom_stocking 2011, as yet not betaread.

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><p>Sipping her coffee, Diana watches the unusually ongoing daily spots with the early morning chirpy newscaster interviewing promycin positives on the street. Each person is encouraged to talk about their new abilities and she can sense the growing enthusiasm but there's often an equal amount of apprehension bleeding through. She's seen it before, albeit in the privacy of a government facility. Now it's under the media spotlight. Doesn't make much difference though, it's still going to be so hard for them to come to terms with what they are now, not quite human as we know it. There's more than twenty times the original 4400, maybe even a whole city of them depending on how this this all ends. Solidarity is theirs, in the city, but they'll still be outsiders to the human race, to the rest of the world.<p>

The local news reports are all about the 'aftermath' of the 50/50 event, ongoing as it is in fact. It's the only thing of interest in Seattle today and apparently the only way to report it is the spin of "We'll miss them dearly but isn't change great' since Jordan Collier's group has eyes on – and hands in - everything now and all the sentiments are as far from the usual anti-promycin and promycin sceptisism as you can get despite what's happened. The local TV channels are probably only still operating with his blessing. Someone somewhere is bound to be have the block radio frequencies ability, even if one of the original 4400 didn't. The national channels are certainly all cut out but that could just as easily be the feds stemming panic, not wanting Seattle to see what's being said about it elsewhere in the country.

Estimates come in at 80,000 positives so far, with it left unsaid that there are as many dead. By the way they talk it's implied the virus is still spreading though they avoid saying so, trying to keep the public calm, only advising people to get the enzyme or stay indoors. She already knows from a late night call that the supplies of the Ubiquinone in the city are depleted. There was never enough here to save all the uninfected of the city and there's been no sign of the airlift supplies so far, with any luck they're arriving today. It's hard to know if they're simply being foiled by those within the confines who want the virus to reach every corner of the city or those Marked who are still out there scarily in positions of great power. Either way it's out of her hands, it'll either turn up or it won't, and Collier's army will deal with distribution. It's only a matter of time before the virus reaches end point within the newly defined walls of the city. She can only hope that's where it stops at least.

No one has told Diana that NTAC is off limits but she doesn't go into work today and no one has called to ask why not. She half expected as much – that NTAC would all but cease to be for a while at least - when she finally called it a night at 3am. Once they'd finished moving the dead bodies out of the office space and into the medical facility, the refrigerated space overflowing, and coordinating the supply drops no one had any heart left for the resistance of what had arrived. Normality had left the building. Besides, how do you deal with the threat to nation security when you're not sure if you're on the same side as it? Meghan and a skeleton crew had stayed, barricading themselves in from the rioters that The 4400 Center volunteers were still attempting to deal with, but Diana had done the only thing she could really consider at the time, walking home carefully along less used back streets, to find her daughter waiting for her.

She knows the roads are blocked off by now, checkpoints are internally in place according to the news who claim it's for everyone's safety but is obviously just as much to restrict movement in the city to the kind Collier approves of. The city's unofficial new controllers don't want anyone getting out, almost as much as the government. It's difficult to know where NTAC stands with either of them and they'll deal with that in due course, but what she needs first is rest after a long long day. Easier said than done; her brain is not cooperating with her body, her mind racing keeping her up half of what night was left once she was back at the apartment.

As she watches another news bulletin flash up, she's honestly surprised they're still calling it Seattle News and not Promise City News. Promise City – the name that was merely a dysfunctional district set apart a day ago seems to be truly applied to the whole city now, being eagerly spouted off by so many promycin positive people in the efforts to keep spirits up. It's meant to inspire hope. Fifty percent of about a third of the city's population is dead already and possibly the head honchos of the country will want the city leveled for all they know or keep them quarantined for a month at best case, but this isn't the ruins of Seattle somehow, it's Promise City now. It's a new city for a new life; anyone left alive after exposure has been reborn in a way.

All Diana can think is, what promise does it hold for her? For an infected person in the city who is neither dead nor showing signs of any powers, instead ironically resistant to promycin whilst half her colleagues dropped like flies around her.

What does it hold for her when her waiting daughter opens the door to their home, with tears in her eyes and a shake of her head. She could tell Maia had hoped they'd finally have that thing in common that separates them. Diana had never felt that way herself, she didn't need anything like a blood bond to prove who her family was, it was in her actions that she proved she was Maia's mother and they were family as long as they stuck together.

Only now she knows Maia feels differently, that lack of promycin running through Diana's veins means something less than good to her daughter. Is she the enemy to Maia now? Just what did Maia see in her visions? Or is she simply a confused and scared girl wondering on what side her mother's loyalty will fall when whatever is going to happen befalls the city? Diana doesn't know which is true, there's no visions to guide her and even if Maia has seen something she won't believe this is the end of their life together in any way.

She does the only thing that make sense to her in the circumstances - she hugged Maia when she stepped through that door and she carried on trying to make it as normal as possible a day for them. This morning she'll keep trying to do the same as much as possible too, even as they do their bit to deal with their own buildings troubles and the inevitable grief they will both have to deal with over the discovery of neighbors and friends who have died already. Above all she'll let her daughter know she loves her, no matter what, and Diana will keep saying it, as much as she has to, until Maia remembers it's true.

The battle will come, though not until she's figured out what precisely she's fighting against. She already knows who she's fighting for.


End file.
